Poverty in South Africa in 1995 – a totally fuzzy and relative approach

Poverty is one of the major challenges facing the continent, Africa and also South Africa. A number of studies on poverty in South Africa have been conducted in the past. Most of the studies followed the income/expenditure approach, which Cheli regards as the traditional approach to poverty measurement. In defining the poor, Sen considers a community S of n people. Then, the set of people with income/expenditure no higher than x is called S(x). If z is ‘the poverty line’, S(z) is the set of ‘the poor’. However, Cheli argues that the division of the population into poor and nonpoor is only to oversimplify reality. Hence this paper uses both the traditional approach to the measurement of poverty and the Totally Fuzzy and Relative approach. The study is based on the October Household Survey conducted by Statistics South Africa in 1995.